Orange County Digest

Anaheim : Husband Wounded in Struggle With Officers

A 38-year-old Anaheim man, who was shot with his own gun as police tried to disarm him, remained hospitalized in serious condition Wednesday.

Thomas Lee Savells suffered a single bullet wound in the head shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday during the struggle with officers who had been called to his Indiana Street home by his estranged wife, Lt. Bill Wright said.

Wright, who declined to release the wife's name, said she had gone to the house to remove personal belongings.

When the two officers arrived, they found Savells holding a semiautomatic pistol, Wright said. It went off as they tried to take it away, he said. The officers, whom he did not identify, had not drawn their own guns during the struggle.

"Things happened so fast, like in milliseconds, that the officers just started grabbing for the gun," Wright said. "They felt it was the only thing they could do instead of drawing their own guns."

The Orange County district attorney's office is investigating, a normal department procedure in officer-involved shootings, Wright said.

Savells, who was being treated at UCI Medical Center in Orange, will be booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, according to Wright.